Redirect Error
-
Hello,
I was sent a report from a colleague containing redirect errors:
The link to "http://www.xxxx.com/old-page/" has resulted in HTTP redirection to "http://www.xxxx.com/new-page".Search engines can only pass page rankings and other relevant data through a single redirection hop. Using unnecessary redirects can have a negative impact on page ranking.
Our site is host on Microsoft Servers (IIS).
I'm not sure what is causing these errors.
Would it be the way the redirect was implemented.
-
as someone who does a lot of auditing, I need to say I'm confused by this somewhat.
"The link to "http://www.xxxx.com/old-page/" has resulted in HTTP redirection to "http://www.xxxx.com/new-page"
That's only one hop. Which is perfectly valid. So where are the "unnecessary redirects" that report is referring to?
By all means, if you have problems on the site, fixing them is always the proper course of action. I only wonder whether you really do have a problem.
Also, for the record, the claim "Search engines can only pass page rankings and other relevant data through a single redirection hop" is NOT true. While more than one hop can be harmful due to slowing Googlebot's crawl, and where multiple hops can slow user experience, which are OTHER, related possible problems for SEO, as long as the hops are kept to one, two, or perhaps three at most, you are sill going to be able to get the full individual page SEO value passed.
Note that this is true only if the new destination page has all of the same SEO signals the original page had. Because you can't magically pass SEO value from page A to page x just by using a redirect. Even if its just one redirect. If page x is significantly different than page A, that's going to change the trust score for the passed value.
Also here's a video from Matt Cutts regarding multiple hop redirects: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA
-
You would need to check the web.config file rather than htaccess as you mentioned your hosted on Microsoft Servers (IIS). Although the following answer is referring to WWW v non WWW the principal is the same:
http://moz.com/community/q/how-do-i-redirect-non-www-pages-to-www-on-a-windows-server#reply_36077
-
I would be curious to know the answer as well.
I was using a quick redirect plugin in Wordpress which I assumed was modifying the .htaccess file (not sure why I thought that). I found out it was not, and although the plugin was very convenient, hard coding the redirect into the .htaccess is much safer and much more effective.
The other thing I noticed when I looked into our .htaccess file was we had code that was rewriting the URI.
For example:
/tag/addiction-treatment/ was actually reading as /addiction-treatment/ so the actual 404 was incurring was on the /addiction-treatment/ page and the redirect needed to happen at /addiction-treatment/ not /tag/addiction-treatment/
Sorry if I jumped the gun a little bit, sometimes I get excited and I can't contain myself!
Hope that helps a ltitle.
-
Did you use a redirect on the page itself or did you use a 301/302 redirect using htaccess?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
"Moz encountered an error on one or more pages on your site" Error
I have been receiving this error for a while: "Moz encountered an error on one or more pages on your site" It's a Multi-Lingual Wordpress website, the robots.txt is set to allow crawlers on all links and I have followed the same process for other website I've done yet I'm receiving this error for this site.
Technical SEO | | JustinZimri0 -
404 Errors for Form Generated Pages - No index, no follow or 301 redirect
Hi there I wonder if someone can help me out and provide the best solution for a problem with form generated pages. I have blocked the search results pages from being indexed by using the 'no index' tag, and I wondered if I should take this approach for the following pages. I have seen a huge increase in 404 errors since the new site structure and forms being filled in. This is because every time a form is filled in, this generates a new page, which only Google Search Console is reporting as a 404. Whilst some 404's can be explained and resolved, I wondered what is best to prevent Google from crawling these pages, like this: mydomain.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=90&catalogId=1008&homePage=Y Implement 301 redirect using rules, which will mean that all these pages will redirect to the homepage. Whilst in theory this will protect any linked to pages, it does not resolve this issue of why GSC is recording as 404's in the first place. Also could come across to Google as 100,000+ redirected links, which might look spammy. Place No index tag on these pages too, so they will not get picked up, in the same way the search result pages are not being indexed. Block in robots - this will prevent any 'result' pages being crawled, which will improve the crawl time currently being taken up. However, I'm not entirely sure if the block will be possible? I would need to block anything after the domain/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?. Hopefully this is possible? The no index tag will take time to set up, as needs to be scheduled in with development team, but the robots.txt will be an quicker fix as this can be done in GSC. I really appreciate any feedback on this one. Many thanks
Technical SEO | | Ric_McHale0 -
What to do with a 302 redirect after a while
Hi guys, A client of ours has a website with a very bad linkprofile. We adressed this issue and we migrated the website to another domain. We redirected the bad website (cornelisbedding.be) to the new domain (cornelisbedding.com) with a 302 redirect. We didn't want to pass the bad link juice. The problem we are having now is that we can't afford to lose the redirect on cornelisbedding.be. We would lose to much traffic because the old domain still has alot of links that generate good quality traffic. I have read that Google will treat 302 redirects as 301's in the long run. We really want to avoid this.
Technical SEO | | Jacobe
We were thinking of using a meta refresh with a delay on, but in Google's eyes that would be considered spammy. Are their any other suggestions on how to handle this? Thanks you!0 -
Domain redirect
Recently we launched a site under a new domain, the site is doing well under the URL. Client calls me today and would like to have another domain he owns point to the new site. The domain he has has no history and no content. He is under the impression that people are looking for him by typing in www.domainxyz.com. I attempted to explain otherwise to him, but I lost. Question, what are the drawbacks of taking this domin and doing a perm redirect via . Httpaccess file?
Technical SEO | | VanadiumInteractive0 -
301 redirects and Dynamic URLs
I just ran my first diagnostic and one of my primary immediate problems are duplicate titles and duplicate content. My guess it that because the root URL http://sitename.com (which has not yet been redirected to www...) has generated an entire tree of content which is identical to the tree rooted at http://www.sitename.com. QUESTION: Do I need to do a redirect simply for the root url (sitename.com -> www.sitename.com) or do I now need to develop specific 301 redirects for each of the sub-nodes/pages? ie sitename.com/?q=about-us -> www.sitename.com/?q=about-us sitename.com/?q=our-team -> www.sitename.com/?q=our-team etc.
Technical SEO | | Barrycliff680 -
Redirecting According to the occasion
We have loads of different departments that relate to specific occasions (e.g. Christmas, mothers day, father day etc), they all have good PR and inbound links etc and most of them rank well for the specific occasion. What I was thinking is that I could redirect all of the occasions that aren’t in use and send the traffic to the valid occasion live at the moment. So I would 301 all the Christmas pages to our valentine’s day main page. Then once valentines is gone I will redirect Christmas and valentines to the mothers day main page and so on. So this would be constantly switching as different occasions come along. Can you see any possible negative problems? Is there any chance that if I redirect Christmas for example, and then when Christmas comes we remove the redirect, could it harm the Christmas page?
Technical SEO | | steliosp210 -
Wordpress SEO Errors - Any advice?
Hi all! My site is on the WP platform and I'm having a crawl error. Wondering if you guys could possibly help me figure out what's going on? I have a good number of 404 errors where the links seems to be appended and I can't figure out why. I've scoured my individual posts and cannot seem to find the broken link? The crawl error looks a bit like this: http://preciousthingsphotography.com/2007/12/10/chicago-family-photographer-welcome/http:%2F%2Fpreciousthingsphotography.com%2F2007%2F12%2F10%2Fchicago-family-photographer-welcome%2F You can see that my original link is somehow being doubled with the slashes being replaced? This is happening on all of my posts. Any ideas as to what could be going on? Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | ptpgen0